


Pendulum

by hobofaerie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobofaerie/pseuds/hobofaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your memories are full of three-way birthday celebrations in the balmy air, with another to follow in just a few months; of snowball fights in John’s front yard; of dusty libraries and spiked hot chocolate and <i>way</i> too much fucking yarn.</p><p>Of stargazing and pointing out all of the universes you wish you could see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pendulum

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an attempt to write something fluffy and Dave/Jade, and then it kind of spiraled out and morphed into... this.
> 
> ...oops?

You kiss John Egbert the night of your fourteenth birthday, the moon shining up above and the stars reflecting off of the calm lagoon. You’d brought along a green candle in the shape of Slimer and a 6-pack of fruit gushers, and the pair of sunglasses he’d bought you the year before are carefully perched atop your head.

It’s probably the single most cliché thing you’ve _ever_ done, and it’s all the worse because it’s _genuine_.

If this had been _his_ birthday, you could babble; could snark and bullshit and explain away a birthday kiss as the prank he’d inevitably see it as, but that’s exactly the point. It _isn’t_ a prank.

You think that you might be kind of in _love_ with this dork, and it scares you half to death.

He laughs kind of nervously when you pull back, and you can’t tell if you’re imagining the blush spreading across his cheeks or if it’s just a trick of the flickering light. But then he grins, and his fingers twine against yours, warm and chapped from the December cold and sweating just a bit, and well.

_Well._

You’ve known John longer than you’ll admit and longer than he remembers, which pretty much means you’ve been conjoined since birth without of all the weird bodily side effects. Two blocks between rainy Washington and searing Texas, and you’d been drawn to him like flies to a garbage truck – fitting, as his taste in movies reek just as bad.

You were raised on cake and Doritos, with the odd home cooked meal when you would stand in the kitchen for too long and John’s dad would catch you stealing a carrot. (Your Bro actually sometimes had them around, hidden between old bottles of ketchup and a particularly brittle replica of the Buster Sword, and you could never figure if he just had thing for orange or if there was actually a hidden reason for the anime shades that he wasn’t telling you about.) You probably drive each other crazy half the time, but it’s a _good_ kind of crazy; not like Rose, who loves to give you inscrutable looks and just smiles in a mystifying way when she sees you half-grinning in John’s direction.

John isn’t some kind of angelic prince – he’s got too much of a pranksters gambit and his little bouts of PMS lend to an admirable kind of assholery, but he’s enthusiastic and sarcastic and everything you’ve ever wanted. Maybe that’s pathetic, maybe it’s stupid, and Rose really fucking _loves_ to tear your thoughts apart over it, but really?

You kind of couldn’t care less.

 

*

 

This one time you had to read some important Greek thing for an English class - it might've been the _Iliad_ , but your memory tried as actively as it could to shut the whole ordeal out. You’re pretty sure it was about a war started over some dude’s wife being kidnapped (at least, that’s what SparkNotes told you when you got too annoyed at reading five pages of repeated dialogue about who was giving someone a group of lesbians that weren't _actually_ lesbians), but nothing is simple and all the meaning is hidden behind sixteen layers of overextended description and meddlesome gods and way too many fucking _names_.

That’s Rose.

She talks like one day she covered a thesaurus in barbeque sauce, started nibbling, and just didn't _stop_. Except paper isn’t something that kids over three should be eating, so she kind of just vomits up words whenever she could say things straight, and you’d complain but it’s not like you really have room to _judge_. You two are kind of united in your bullshit, and… it’s a good thing.

(You’re not entirely convinced that she doesn't use weird eldritch magic to make you think that, but you have to have _some_ kind of faith in her.)

Rose is something halfway between a cousin and a sister with a healthy dose of Lucy from _Peanuts_ thrown in to give her just the sanest edge of what-the-fuck- _bullshit_. She gives you these little glances all the time, like she always fucking _knows_ what you’re thinking halfway before you’ve thought of it yourself, and it kind of freaks you out. People shouldn’t just _know_ what you’re thinking – you keep that shit to yourself - but Rose has never really cared about things like privacy when there’s childhood trauma to psychoanalyze half to death.

_Yeah man, let me sit here and tell you about puppets and inferiority complexes, that sounds like the best idea since God farted the universe into being._

_I’m quite sure that science refutes the idea that the universe was, as you so eloquently put, ‘farted into being’, Dave._

(There was an amused look in her eye, though, when you’d talked that one time, and she’d let it drop.)

 

*

 

She’s got her head in the clouds, more interested in the stars and a little golden moon than the people around her, and you’ll never admit it but you think her glasses are cute.

This isn’t the Breakfast Club – there’s no social suicide when nobody actually _cares_ about what you do. She isn’t Ally Sheedy and you aren’t Emilio Estevez. It isn’t like you haven’t tried the lettermen thing, but the jacket didn’t sit right with the shades, and if it’s a choice between your sunglasses and some sewn on letter, well then.

The choice is just obvious.

(You’re pretty sure that she actually _does_ inhale pixie stick sandwiches, but if Bro hadn’t put you off the shit for life after giving you the candy for quick shots of energy as a kid, you probably would too, so it’s something that you can work with.)

You worked with her on a school project once, something fiddly and precise, and you finished it about five minutes before the bell rang, hunched in whispers over her desk. You were both half-hysteric, as much as your won’t admit it now when she teases you. You’d had two weeks, but somehow time got away from you. It’s not really like you’d _cared_ so much, though, in between joking additions to faerie tales and debating the finer mechanics of time travel.

(“You’d still need something to keep yourself from tearing apart! God, Dave, you can’t cross the mysteries of time and space with just a fancy suit!”

“Suit’s better than a bubble, or a box – no container can keep the Strider contained, and I make time my personal _bitch_ , Rapunzle.”

“Don’t call me that.”

But she’d smiled toothily anyway.)

You think that in another world you might’ve known the words for this feeling, but if you ever lived another life you’ve forgotten it in favor of this one. You can’t say that you mind, though, when you’ve got the dorkiest boyfriend to ever dork and a psychoanalytic cousin who talks more shit than an episode of Jersey Shore. And then…

And then you’ve got Jade, who knows you inside and out; who goes along with your coolkid act the way you go along with her roleplaying, because it’s fun to pretend and lose yourself for just a few hours. When she calls you out on your (copious) bullshit it isn’t the same as when the others do it; it’s not as harsh, and you like the little hint of tease in her voice when you know she’s not fooled at all. You mesh well, for two as different as night and day, and you sometimes think that you just _would not know what to do_ if she was gone.

 

*

 

You’ve been friends for years, John and Jade and Rose and you; grown up together, practically, no house more than two blocks away, and you’re sure that the weatherman has some fucking fierce words about your neighborhood and its intense climate weirdness. None of you really know how city planning managed to get a shitty apartment set so close to a castle that’s probably some kind of historical landmark, but it doesn’t really matter to any of you, either. Whenever the cold got too intense for even John to handle you’d always trucked over to Jade’s behemoth of a whatever-the-hell-you-call-it, and spent the day in tropical paradise. Your memories are full of three-way birthday celebrations in the balmy air, with another to follow in just a few months; of snowball fights in John’s front yard; of dusty libraries and spiked hot chocolate and _way_ too much fucking yarn.

Of stargazing and pointing out all of the universes you wish you could see.

(You don’t know why that thought strikes you as so important, but then again, there’s a lot about life that doesn’t make sense.)

And sometimes when you all lie out, hands linked and staring at the stars, the blackness reflects back in your wide white eyes and you think that maybe, just maybe… this is how it _should_ be.

**Author's Note:**

> Negastrife recced and did a small art piece for this, and I was ridiculously excited :3 http://negastrife.tumblr.com/post/32568806748/you-dont-know-why-that-thought-strikes-you-as


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